You'd never imagine it now but Capel Street was once Dublin's most fashionable commercial street, the Grafton Street of its day. These days, Capel Street, often clogged with traffic, is better known for having probably more charity shops and more sex shops than any other street in Dublin.
It all began way back in the late 17th century, when it was named after the lord lieutenant of Ireland, Lord Arthur Capel, Earl of Essex. A friend of his, Sir Humphrey Jervis, Dublin's first property "improver", or developer, built the street on the lands of St Mary's Abbey, which he had bought around 1674. Sir Humphrey named the new street as a little "thank you" for favours granted to him by the lord lieutenant, who came to a bloody end.
In 1682, he was accused of conspiring against King Charles II and ended up in the Tower of London, where he was later found with his throat cut.
After the first Essex bridge had been opened in 1676 (Grattan Bridge wasn't opened until two centuries later) , the first houses were built in Capel Street. During the early 18th century, Capel Street became incredibly fashionable, the place to live in Dublin, well before Georgian Dublin was developed.
William Connolly, who commissioned Castletown House in Celbridge, Co Kildare, had his town house in Capel Street. Margaret "Peg" Woffington, one of the great acting personalities of the 18th century, lived in Capel Street, where her house was the setting for many outstanding parties. She moved to London in 1740 and even greater fame on the stage. Peg's father had been a bricklayer, while her mother had taken in washing.
One of Ireland's first mints was set up in Capel Street - the other was in Cork - and shopkeepers were under threat of being sent to the gallows if they didn't use the new money made in Capel Street. Later, King James's Mint became Sheridan's School; its principal, Thomas Sheridan, was a great friend of Swift, who often visited him in Capel Street.
The lavish Capel Street linen hall was opened in 1702 and thrived for that century. Dublin also had a busy lottery culture in the 18th century and the draws for it were done in a hall in Capel Street, by boys from the Blue Coat School. A well-known late 18th century Malton print shows two lottery shops at the bridge end of the street. In those days, Dublin was a very small city, with a population of not much more than 150,000.
Two events conspired to downgrade the street. In 1791, the Custom House was opened and shipping, which had sailed up as far as Essex Bridge, gravitated downstream. Then the Wide Streets Commission decided to widen what is now O'Connell Street, and as soon as this work was ready, Dublin's centre of gravity swung away from Capel Street.
During the 19th century, Capel Street became a mecca of shops and craft workshops, a pungent mixture of commercial outlets and tenements. It saw some of Ireland's first immigrants from Europe arrive, including Engelbert Shirtsinger, a German Jew, who ran a clockmaking business at Number 48.
The Italian connection has long been important. At Number 85, Dominick Farrara, the first Italian to live in the street, had a curious combination of business interests: he ran a boarding house and made religious statues.
The Cafollas once had an ice cream shop in the street. The Italian links are continued by the present day Fusciardi fish and chip shop, which opened in 1937. The street even once had an Italian grocery shop, run by one John Halliday, long, long ago.
About 150 years ago, Rosanna Ennis, baker by appointment to the lord lieutenant, had her premises at Number 133, while a few doors up the street, at Number 141, Richard Coyne was bookseller and publisher to the Roman Catholic bishops of Ireland.
During the 19th century and well into the 20th, the retail mix in Capel Street was truly eclectic, everything from hardware to pram shops.
Capel Street used to have a gin palace, a theatre and St Patrick's music hall, a rowdy place indeed. Solicitors liked the river end of the street, because it was so near the courts. At one stage, one building on Capel Street, near the Liffey, housed no fewer than 27 solicitors. One of Dublin's first two public libraries was opened here in 1884, lasting for just over a century, until its closure in 1986. Its successor was the new central library in the nearby Ilac centre.
James Joyce, who mentioned the street and its library in Ulysses, (Bloom borrows a book from there) was an aficionado. He said that places he knew in Paris had the same joy and excitement as Capel Street, where bargaining on Saturday nights for Sunday's dinner was a "holiday". The Joycean connection continued until very recently. One of Capel Street's great characters of recent decades, Gerald Davis, artist, gallery owner, writer, raconteur and jazz enthusiast, liked to impersonate Leopold Bloom. Sadly, Davis died this past June.
In the earlier 20th century, as part of the Abercrombie plan to redevelop central Dublin, a great metropolitan cathedral was proposed for the top of Capel Street, to replace the pro- Cathedral in Marlborough Street.
It would have made a fantastic architectural vista, stretching from the old City Hall, down the length of Parliament Street and Capel Street to the new cathedral, but it was not to be. This was yet another great plan, a vision for the future, that got shelved.
Capel Street has also long been a great musical street. One of the last of the great Irish violin makers, John O'Neill, set up shop at Number 140 Capel Street about 1830; the last of his children died as recently as 1929.
Music shops and music-making have long been part of Capel Street, a tradition continued by Slattery's pub.
Now, it's very rare to find someone who was born and reared in Capel Street actually living there, although Michael Walsh, the manager of Halston Street credit union in Capel Street, is a native of the street. These days, it' s a one-way street, the wooden cobblestones long gone and the Luas line from Tallaght cutting across it. Dublin City Council hopes to rejuvenate it, but Capel Street has far to go before it can be restored to even some of the fashionable prestige it enjoyed in the 18th century.